Anatomy is often remembered as one of
the most difficult things that you will
learn in medical school the sheer amount
of content you need to know to pass an
anatomy exam is daunting and to add to
that everything is in Latin great the
world of anatomy can seem really
overwhelming but having finished medical
school and now started work as a doctor
I feel like I've learned a lot about the
best ways to wrap your head around it
your driving force when studying Anatomy
should always be pathology and clinical
application you'll rarely be asked an
anatomy based question that isn't
directly relevant to some sort of
commonly seen pathology in a clinical
setting well you might and that sucks
but it's unlikely to be the entire focus
of your exams for example out of all of
the nerves and arteries veins lymphatic
drainage in the arm probably the most
important is the median nerve and also
the radial nerve but let's focus on the
median for now so you should know how
the median nerve courses throughout the
arm where it might be most easily
damaged and what symptoms or signs you
might expect a patient to have if it is
in fact damaged in the leg you'll
commonly be asked Anatomy questions
related to the most common sports
injuries things like ACL tears Vegas or
various impact oshkood Slaughter disease
Etc similarly in the chest you want to
know how all the different structures
relate to each other to be able to
identify them on an X-ray or an MRI or
whatever but also so that if one of
these structures expands let's say you
grow a tumor or you get an aneurysm or
hypertrophy of one of the chambers of
the heart you can think about what
structures are surrounding it and what
other things might be affected there's
obviously a lot more to this and it's
more complicated than I can make it seem
in a couple of sentences in this video
but the idea that questions on exams
will follow commonly seen clinical
presentations is quite important the
more questions that you do from past
paper questions online learning Anatomy
platforms and things like that you'll
see what parts of the body examiners
like to focus on so the bottom line is
do as many questions as you can in my
opinion the absolute best way to study
anatomy which you can't really replace
with anything else is actually seeing
the anatomy in real life in the cadaver
and in my first and second year in
medical school at King's College London
we had the incredible opportunity to do
first-hand dissection on a real human
cadaver each week we spend several hours
in the cadaver room cutting into and
peeling back the layers of anatomy over
real person who had donated their body
in the name of Science and even now when
I think about Anatomy I have etched in
my head some of the things that I saw in
the dissection room it was such an
emotional and intense learning
experience that I haven't forgotten a
lot of what I learned in that room and
when I try to visualize the 3D
presentation of different parts of the
anatomy and how the different organs and
structures are related to each other in
front of or behind to the side whether
they pass over each other or around it's
just so much easier to kind of close my
eyes and think back to that anatomy in
the cadaver lab I'm so thankful to these
people who donated their bodies to allow
us as medical students to learn the
anatomy from the inside not only because
I think it's such a powerful way to
learn Anatomy but I also think it's a
really humbling experience and as a
medical student it gives you a real
appreciation for another person's life
and how we as doctors are able to play a
small part and sometimes a big part in
those people's lives now I know that
counterberg dissection isn't available
to everyone but thankfully with advances
in technology anyone with a computer or
a phone an iPad and an internet
connection has accessed some really
incredible 3D visualization tools
learning Anatomy from a set of 2D flash
cards like this one which I used quite a
bit in my second year
not very much since then so this is an
example of what some of these flash
cards look like they've got detailed
images of different parts of the anatomy
all in 2D which can be really helpful
for testing your recoil of different
images and information but these guys
can only take you so far my personal
favorite 3D visualizer is this app that
I have on my Mac and on my iPhone and on
my iPad called complete Anatomy this
thing is incredible you can really zoom
in to see all the different detailed
structures inside the body at a level
that is just honestly insane and what I
really like about it as well is that you
can isolate different parts of the body
and different parts of the anatomy to
help you focus on what you want to learn
so for example there's way too many
arteries here it's kind of clogging up
this image so I just go down here to the
layers of archery so I can slowly start
to cut them back from the most
peripheral to the most Central and
important and if we want we can even get
rid of them entirely but I like the
Beating Heart animation so let's just
keep it in for now similarly I kind of
want to get rid of the nerves over here
so let's cut those out and I want to add
on the muscles so yeah with something
like this you can click on any one of
these structures and it'll give you some
information about them what I think is
the most important for these 3D
visualizers is that it shows you how
these muscles move or how these
structures move and what their use is so
here we have this iliacus and it's
showing us hip flexion showing you when
the muscles contract and when they relax
and how they move which is incredibly
incredibly helpful it also quite easily
and simply demonstrates to you the
insertions and the origins of these
different muscles now if you already
couldn't tell the level of detail and
the amount of structures that you can
have in a 3D visualizer like this is
just absolutely huge way more than I
would ever need to know for a medical
school the good thing about this is not
whatever you're learning in medical
school you can go to that lecture or
that tutorial or whatever and then focus
on that Anatomy over here so let's say
for example we only want to learn about
the anatomy of the Upper Limb we can go
over here to the side click on the Upper
Limb get rid of the lymphatic drainage
because we're not interested in that
right now what we're really interested
in like we talked about before are the
nerves and then here if we just click we
can see the median nerve and it's
running right next to
foreign
the brachial artery that's right and you
can see how the nerve courses from the
shoulder all the way down into the
medial elbow and then down and
innervates the hand like this now
personally for me these 3D visualizers
have been really helpful in certain
contexts they're really good if I don't
understand how the anatomy works from
reading a lecture or a tutorial or
watching a video and I can go in here
for myself and see how it goes
throughout the body but what I feel like
they're really missing for me is a
teaching element the component where
they explain to you what is going on is
clinical application Etc personally I
learned best when I'm being taught I
like someone to tell me what the
important things are to show me the
important things and then I can
supplement that learning in my own way
with my own other resources I think it's
really important to also talk about
YouTube videos this particular video
about the brachial plexus I come back to
over and over and over again and this is
the reason I can drop the brachial
plexus on a piece of paper and I can
answer all the questions related to the
brachial plexus in an exam there's
nothing quite like someone taking an
extremely complicated dated topic and
condensing it down and showing you only
the most important things that you
actually need to know there's plenty
examples of videos like this on the
internet and I encourage you to search
out for them if you're struggling to
understand an anatomy concept now as
much as I love the 3D visualizers one of
the main problems that I have with them
is that although I could see everything
really clearly and it's very cool to
look at it's missing the learning the
explanation and the teaching that I need
to know about the anatomy that I'm
seeing as a medical student you've got
lots of work to do you've got exams
assignments your own learning time on
clinical placement and for me I want my
studying to be as simple and easy as
possible and that's where the sponsor of
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that I've talked about earlier in this
video you want read really good images
that you can see the anatomy you want
someone to teach you what the important
things are about the anatomy that you're
seeing and then you need to do as many
questions as possible in the form of
quizzes to make sure you actually learn
that information that you're studying
the content is organized into smaller
studying units really focusing on the
high yield information that you're
likely to be tested on in your exams
once you've watched the videos examine
the images and read through the
information you can then quiz yourself
on the material that you just studied
like I said this is incredibly important
as testing yourself and recalling the
information like this can make sure that
you're learning it properly and actually
understanding the content itself their
videos even have speed controls that you
can play back the video at faster speeds
and I'm sure you know just how big a fan
I am of this feature they've also got
cheat sheets and reference charts which
help summarize lots of useful
information into a small geographical
area something that I've used
extensively in my studying throughout
medical school they're in a small
footprint which makes them easy to learn
and reference and also you can use
geographical and spatial Association to
remember different pieces of information
on that single page kenhub has a ton of
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get started today another very important
thing when it comes to learning Anatomy
is to ask yourself how am I going to be
tested the first thing I would suggest
to any first or second year student is
to have a look at what their Anatomy
curriculum is you don't need to know all
of this content but it's important to be
aware of what is possibly going to be
examined this is the case for all exams
but I find it particularly important
with Anatomy the pace on which you're
asked to learn all the different anatomy
and the endless amount of structures is
a lot and it helps to know what is going
on and when once you know what the
breadth of topics are that are possibly
going to be examined you need to know
how it is that you're going to be
examined a lot of medical schools will
teach either with canaveric images Pro
sections or dissections with pins to
identify structures some other medical
schools will use purely multiple choice
questions or short answer questions
they'll ring your exams and more there's
no point in you spending all your time
studying from categoric images when your
medical school is only going to test you
on Illustrated drawings it's also
important to know how much of your exam
is going to be asking you simply to
identify structures I.E do you know
where this pin is pointing to in the arm
or are they going to ask you more about
the theory the innervations actions and
attachments Origins Etc your school
might even test you using only one
resource so it's worth knowing what that
resource is that your school uses and
focusing on that this might be one or a
few specific Anatomy atlases or it might
just be multiple choice questions you
never know 5 find out what it is and use
that as your guide how you're going to
be tested is so important because
Anatomy is a fast fast topic and it's
incredibly easy to over learn the
content you might only be asked to learn
about the important clinical
applications of a certain part of the
body's Anatomy or you might be asked to
learn every single little structure its
origin its insertion how it interacts
with the structures around it Etc so
having this information in advance and
knowing what to focus on is a lot of
power here it's so tempting to sit at
your desk with a pile of anatomy atlases
flashcards and fake textbooks 3D
visualizers and online learning
platforms but this is so incredibly
overwhelming and probably not going to
make Anatomy a very fun thing for you to
learn I think the best thing that you
can do is to not overwhelm yourself
choose one or two resources and stick to
them in medical school I feel like we're
already bombarded with so many different
resources on how to learn the content I
personally found it the most helpful to
stick to ones that include the best
parts of all the different things that
I've talked about in this video kenhub
is a perfect example of that some other
things you can do is come someone from
the anatomy team at your University or
medical school this could be one of the
anatomy demonstrators a professor or
teaching fellow however they're going to
have all the information that you need
and it's a good idea to be nice to them
so they can help you as you go along
after all Anatomy is a marathon not a
Sprint and you need all the support you
can get and you want to know where you
can go to find it a couple of mistakes I
made along the way that I want to tell
you about so that you can avoid making
them yourself the first of which is that
Anatomy textbooks are such a waste of
time they are really really detailed
with tons of information that you just
don't need to know and you could easily
spend weeks and weeks and weeks reading
that Anatomy textbook or watch one
little video or look at one highly
detailed image and get all the content
you really need to know Anatomy
resources that are specifically geared
to teaching you information in small
undigestible chunks are the way to go
and on top of that you have to test
yourself please don't forget the doing
the questions part of learning you can
read and watch videos and look at images
as much as you want but if you don't do
the questions and test your recall of
that information you're not going to
fully learn the material doing questions
and doing quizzes is the best way to
learn what you're studying and this
doesn't only apply to anatomy and it
doesn't only apply to medical school
this is how studying should be read the
information learn the information then
test yourself using questions all right
and that is it I hope that this quick
guide about learning Anatomy has helped
to give you some ideas on how to get
started or at least how to make it a
little less overwhelming hopefully you
learned a thing or two on studying
Anatomy for you will be a little bit
easier than it was for me back in the
day like this video If you enjoyed it
subscribe for more and I'll catch you in
the next one peace
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